The Oak Ridge Site Specific
Advisory Board (ORSSAB) held its monthly meeting on Wednesday, January 11, 2006,
at the DOEInformationCenter in Oak Ridge, beginning at 6 p.m. A video
of the meeting was made and may be viewed by phoning the InformationCenter
at 865-241-4780.

John Owsley, Ex-Officio, Tennessee
Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC)

Steve McCracken, Deputy
Designated Federal Officer

Others Present

Jim Donnelly, National
Nuclear Security Administration

Luther
Gibson

Spencer Gross, Spectrum

Joan Hughes, Oak Ridge National
Laboratory (ORNL)

Pete Osborne, Spectrum

Tony Poole, Bechtel Jacobs,
Co. (BJC)

Twenty-two
members of the public were present.

Presentation

2004 Annual Site Environmental
Report

Ms.
Hughes presented the results of the Annual Site Environmental Report (ASER)
(Attachment 1).She said input for the
report comes from more than 70 authors.Her presentation was divided into four sections:

Why a report is written

What it contains and
what it doesn’t report

Overview of the Oak
Ridge Reservation (ORR) environmental programs

Overview of the results
from each major site on the ORR – ORNL, East Tennessee Technology Park
(ETTP), and the Y-12 National Security Complex (Y-12).

She
said the ASER is required by DOE Order 231.1, which calls for an annual summary
of data to characterize environmental performance.The ASER is delivered in October and contains
data for the previous calendar year.She
said DOE Order 450.1 issued in January 2003 calls for environmental monitoring
criteria.The purpose of the order is to
promote sound stewardship practices for air, water, land, and natural and
cultural resources.

The
major component of that effort is the Environmental Management System. Its purpose
is to go beyond compliance and reduce future harmful impacts to the
environment.All three sites on the ORR
have an EMS in place.

Ms.
Hughes said not all data is included in the ASER, such as waste
characterization and remedial investigation data.

She
said there are three volumes of ASER material – the primary report, the data
volume, and the student summary compiled by students at KarnsHigh School.All three volumes are available on the
Internet at www.ornl.gov/aser.

Airborne
radiological dose summary and ORR radiation dose limits for all pathways are
noted in Attachment 1, page 4.Information on the three major sites is noted in Attachment 1, pages
5-8.

A
summary of the ASER results is noted in Attachment 1, page. 9

After
Ms. Hughes presentation a number of questions were asked by Board members.Following are abridged questions and answers.

Question

Answer

Ms. Jones – At ETTP, you have a
figure of 900 buildings scheduled for reindustrialization or demolition.Is that all buildings or just the ones
workers would normally be associated with?

Mr. Poole – All structures.

Mr.
Trammell
– Why are the leasees not included in the information at ETTP?

Mr.
Poole –
When the leasing program began, they were covered under their own permits -
radiological licenses and those types of things.The direct effluence from them is not a DOE
source so it’s not part of DOE reporting.But because they are co-located among the facilities they would be
picked up in some of the ambient monitoring, because you measure ambience no
matter who is discharging. So
indirectly some of the effluence would be part of the report, but not those.

Mr. Mezga – You said the trends are
consistent for toxicity monitoring for water sampling at ETTP.What is the trend?

Mr. Poole – The trend for toxicity
is basically the same.You won’t see a
change until you see source removal back into the watershed.That particular action has not occurred yet
under the cleanup program.

Mr. Adams – The front part of the
report has a lot of notation in the metric system.But later a lot of it is in the English
system.Why is that?

Ms. Hughes – At one point we used to
provide a conversion table and we got away from that.Now we report in units that were used in
measuring and what the authors provided.We’ve talked about it and what I think we’re going to do is provide a
conversion for the English system when it’s reported that way and in other
cases use the metric system as reported.

Mr. Mulvenon – They will probably
report in metric and put the English conversion in parentheses.

Mr. Mezga – Is the ASER a valid
tool for evaluating the effectiveness of cleanup on the reservation?

But in general, can the
information found in ASER be used to understand at a higher level what’s
going on on the reservation from the standpoint of the effectiveness of
corrective actions?

Ms. Hughes – I think the Remediation
Effectiveness Report is where you find that information.

Mr. Poole – With the ASER what
we’re following are the discharges from the permitted units.The ASER is not designed to do the effectiveness.
That’s the reason we have the Remediation
Effectiveness Report.In general with
the water quality trends, yes, you can see if there are any spikes.But the ASER is not the tool to accomplish
that.

Mr. Douglas – Is there any way the
report can be delivered before almost a year has passed?

Ms. Hughes – This report is
delivered on Oct. 1.That’s about as
early as we can deliver because we sample until the end of December.Then there’s a month to two months waiting
for analytical results, then data verification and validation, then it goes
for dose assessment, and so on.It
would be pretty difficult to shorten that unless we cut out data collection
in December.We can provide specific
information for a project earlier than that, generally.

Ms. Mei You said the hypothetical
maximum exposure is 12 millirems.That
is compared to what number?

How does that compare to
other sites like Hanford or Argonne?

Ms. Hughes – That’s compared to the
100 millirem DOE limit.

Ms. Hughes – I don’t really know,
but I can get that information for you.

Mr. Donnelly – At Y-12 it’s slightly
higher because of the deer dose.

Mr.
Gibson –
In October 2004 there was a meeting at the NationalTransportationResearchCenter
that developed guidelines for the ASER.Have you had a similar meeting in the past year and is that guidance
available?

Do
you think you could give it to us before the report comes out so we could
track it?

Ms.
Hughes –
Yes.We had a similar meeting.It rotates from site to site and was held in
Los Alamos in October 2005.The guidance for 2005 has not come out
yet.We usually don’t receive that
until March or April.But it’s pretty
consistent from year to year.

Yes.The deliverable date and that kind of
information is in the 231.1 order.

Mr.
Johnson –
You measure certain circumstances to an established standard.Are those compared to some control
standard, say, in Chattanooga or Knoxville?

Ms.
Hughes –
Yes.In almost all the programs we
have offsite reference locations we compare to. For the reservation-wide programs, for
instance ambient air, there is no significant difference in measurements from
the offsite locations to the reservation perimeter stations.In surface water we do measurements
upstream and downstream.We do
vegetable and milk sampling, and we have reference locations in non-impacted
areas.Reservation wide we don’t see
much difference from reference standards.

Deputy Designated Federal
Officer and Ex-Officio Comments

Mr. McCracken reported on an
accident at ETTP where a worker fell 29 feet through a K-25 operating
floor.The worker was seriously injured,
but survived and has returned home from the hospital.An investigation is underway to determine the
cause of the accident.

Mr. Mulvenon commented that
he was glad the worker survived, but believed that DOE should not delay in
resuming work at K-25. Mr. McCracken said there was a pause in elevated work as
a result of the accident, but as far as he knew most, if not all, of the work
in elevated areas had resumed and work continues at K-25.

Mr. McCracken said the East
Tennessee Environmental Business Association held a conference January 10 and
11 to discuss lessons learned on various cleanup projects to help DOE-ORO plan
for work to be done on the ORR between 2009 and 2015.Mr. McCracken said a lot of good ideas came
out of the meeting and the results will be published later and placed on the association’s
website, www.eteba.org.He said planning
for work between 2009 and 2015 must begin soon.

Mr. Bonner asked if work
scheduled to end in 2009 would run concurrent with the new work scheduled to
begin in 2009.Mr. McCracken said he
felt the new work would actually start in 2008 and overlap the finishing work
scheduled for completion in 2009. He said he would be able to report actual
start date for new work and the estimated cost of completion at a later date,
perhaps within two months.

Mr. McCracken reported that
processing of contact-handled transuranic (CH TRU) waste has begun at the TRU
Waste Processing Facility.He said DOE
is working with TDEC to secure a modification to the Resource Conservation
Recovery Act permit, which will allow for a continuous flow of CH TRU for
processing and disposition at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP) in New Mexico.

Mr. Trammell asked when all of the CH TRU
would be shipped to WIPP.Mr. McCracken
said DOE-ORO would not be able to get onto WIPP’s CH delivery schedule until
well into the summer of 2006.He said WIPP
was told if some other facility in the DOE complex could not make its delivery
schedule, then DOE-ORO would take that spot to send CH TRU to WIPP.Officials from WIPP must come to Oak Ridge to do a
certification review in February, and the hope is transport would begin shortly
after that.But Mr. McCracken had no
definite time that shipments would begin or transport completed.

He said he is working with
the Tennessee Department of Transportation to secure the necessary waivers for
transporting the remaining uranium hexafluoride containers from ETTP for
storage in Ohio.

Mr. Trammell asked about the
2006 budget.Mr. McCracken said about $7
million was taken out of the original budget of $500 million.He said that’s a rather small amount to deal
with and work is being done to determine what effect it will have on
operations.Mr. Adler added that the
shortfall might require ‘modest’ adjustments to some FFA milestones.

Mr. Trammell asked about the
haul road from ETTP to the Environmental Management Waste Management Facility.Mr. McCracken said the road is scheduled to
open January 17.Mr. Mulvenon asked if a
more detailed explanation of haul road cost overruns was forthcoming. Mr. Adler said an explanation would be
provided at the EM committee meeting on January 18.

Mr. Trammell asked about the
explanation of significant differences (ESD) to the Molten Salt Reactor
Experiment record of decision (ROD).Mr.
Adler said the ESD explains a proposed modification to the ROD, which would
change the agreed to configuration of removed fuel salts from the reactor stored
at Building 3019 at ORNL.The draft ESD fact
sheet will be discussed more fully at the EM committee meeting on January 18.Mr. Myrick asked about the status of Building
3019, which is undergoing shutdown from medical isotope production.Mr. McCracken said it was made the
responsibility of EM by an act of Congress and a report is being prepared
detailing how the work is to be done.

Mr. Douglas asked how the continued
operation of the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA) Incinerator would figure
in handling wastes from other sources.Mr. McCracken said he believed the bulk of the material would come from Portsmouth, Ohio, and Paducah, Ky.,
and were primarily oils containing PCBs drained from their gaseous diffusion
plants.He said he thought there was a sufficient
backlog of material to keep the incinerator in operation for about three more
years. Mr. McCracken said he could get more detailed information on the non-ORO
TSCA Incinerator wastes.

Mr. Adler had no other
comments.

Ms. Jones said the EPA project
manager for the ETTP Site Wide ROD is in the process of compiling comments for
the remedial investigation/feasibility study.She said EPA has received DOE’s response to comments on the phased
construction completion report for the K-901 and Duct Island Area at ETTP.She said EPA hopes to resolve remaining
issues and approve the document.She
said she expects EPA to approve the phased construction completion report for
the Predominantly Uncontaminated
Facilities of the Remaining Facilities Demolition Project at ETTP.

Mr. Owsley said DOE provides TDEC the opportunity to
review and comment on the ASER and its site environmental monitoring
plans.He said the findings are
consistent with the state’s own environmental monitoring activities.Mr. Owsley said the state’s monitoring is not
meant to duplicate DOE’s monitoring efforts, but to complement it.He said the state’s primary concern is not so
much the ambient environment, but the potential for hazardous releases from the
ORR.

Mr. Owsley said several reports by the state are due
out.An annual status report that
updates projects by TDEC and provides an assessment of DOE’s environmental
management activities is due by the end of January.Mr. Owsley said the state also provides an
annual environmental monitoring plan that will be available by the end of
January, as well. He said an annual environmental monitoring report will be
available in the spring 2006.

Mr. Owsley said all TDEC produced reports and plans
are available at the TDEC offices, the DOEInformationCenter, in local
libraries, and on the Internet at www.tennessee.gov/environment/ doeo/active.php.

Mr. Mulvenon asked about the status of grouting
activities at Trenches 5 and 7 in MeltonValley.Mr. McCracken said he and Mr. Owsley went to
the site to look at a test trench that had been dug.According to a report he received from on
expert on site, Mr. McCracken said the grout used to seal the waste had passed
conductivity requirements.Mr. Owsley
said equipment is being installed to monitor the conductivity of the grout and
that information will used to determine if the remedy is effective.

Public Comment

Mr. Gibson said he wanted to
make a connection on the ASER presentation to some recommendations by the Board.He noted a recommendation made in 1999 on the
1997 ASER, which made some suggestions on improving the report.

He also noted a
recommendation in 2005 on the public health assessment for the TSCA Incinerator
related to ambient air monitoring, but no response has been received on that
recommendation.

Announcements and Other
Board Business

The next Board meeting will
be Wednesday, February 8, 2006, at 6 p.m. at the DOEInformationCenter. The topic will be
Strategic Planning for ETTP Following Cleanup.

The
minutes of the December 14, 2005, meeting were approved with one correction.

The Comment on the Class 3
Modification to the Hazardous Waste Facility Permit for the Waste isolation
Pilot Plant was approved (Attachment 2).

Mr. Trammell introduced Becky Brunton as the Board’s new facilitator for the
EM and Stewardship committees.

Committee Reports

Board Finance – no report

EM – Mr. Mezga reported that
the committee heard a presentation on the K-1007 Ponds remediation
alternatives.He said the committee is
considering whether to write a recommendation on the issue.He said the committee will discuss a draft
recommendation on independent verification at ETTP at its next meeting.The presentation topic for the next meeting
will be newly generated waste transition at Y-12 from DOE EM to National
Nuclear Security Administration.

He said the Waste Management
Symposia is coming up in Tucson,
Ariz., and any Board member
interested in attending should submit a travel request.

Public Outreach – The committee did not
meet in December, but Ms. Cothron said she, Mr. Trammell, Mr. Douglas, and Mr.
Mulvenon met with state representative Jim Hackworth and brought him up to date
on the activities of the Board and encouraged him to stay informed about Board
activities.

She said the teachers’
workshop for the Stewardship Education Resource Kit is set for February 9 and
11 at Pollard Auditorium.Work continues
on its planning and execution.

Mr. Douglas attended the Perma-Fix
Waste Management Forum recently.He set
up the ORSSAB exhibit and distributed materials about the group and interacted
with attendees of the conference.Ms.
Cothron encouraged Board members to send ideas about public outreach for the
Board to any Public Outreach committee member.

Stewardship – Mr. Mulvenon said the education minute for the
December meeting was on end state vision, which he said is being reinstituted
by DOE headquarters.He said the
presentation at the December meeting was on the Long-term Stewardship
Implementation Plan.The committee
continues to discuss what will be included in the plan.The January presentation will be on the land
use control implementation plan for MeltonValley.

Executive – The committee did not
meet in December.Mr. Trammell did
comment that he and Mr. Mulvenon are members of the Community Reuse
Organization of East Tennessee (CROET) board as representatives of ORSSAB.He said the CROET board is restructuring from
40 members to only 15 and he and Mr. Mulvenon had been nominated to serve on
the new board.He felt like that
indicated ORSSAB input was important to CROET, but he said that no seat on the
CROET board would be designated for ORSSAB after his and Mr. Mulvenon’s terms
end.

He encouraged members to
review their packets prior to meetings, especially incoming correspondence, any
proposed recommendations, and the EM projects update table.

He also encouraged members
to attend the Spring Chairs meeting in April.He said the agenda is pretty firm and DOE Assistant Secretary for EM James
Rispoli has been invited to attend.

Board Process – Ms. Bogard reported that at
its December meeting the committee discussed the process for making
recommendations.It was felt that
Stewardship and EM committee members should become more involved in the process
of developing recommendations rather than have one or two committee members
spearhead the procedure.That discussion
led to the mentoring process. It was felt that mentors should contact protégés
when a recommendation is due to be discussed at a Board meeting and explain why
that recommendation is important to the Board.The committee also believed mentors acting as issue managers for a
recommendation should involve their protégés in developing a draft recommendation.
Ms. Bogard encouraged Board members to maintain regular contact with their
protégés.She said Board Process would be evaluating the
effectiveness of the mentoring program next month.

Federal Coordinator Report

Ms. Halsey said DOE must
notify the regulators by January 13 if there were going to be any impacts to
the cleanup schedules as a result of budget shortfalls.The ORSSAB will be copied on that
correspondence.She said Bechtel Jacobs,
DOE’s prime cleanup contractor, is studying how the shortfall will affect
Federal Facility Agreement milestones and will submit a milestone modification
form to the regulators on February 6.

She said the Federal
Facility Agreement Cleanup Progress Report is scheduled for delivery to the
regulators on January 31.Copies of the
report will be sent to the board members with their next meeting materials.

Ms. Halsey said DOE and the
regulators will be meeting on January 18 and 19 at the DOEInformationCenter.That meeting is closed to the public.

She reported that with the
addition of two new members the ORSSAB is at its full contingent of 20 voting members.

Additions to the Agenda

No
additions.

Motions

1/11/06.1

Mr. Olson moved to approve
the agenda.Mr. Adams seconded and the
motion carried unanimously.

1/11/06.2

Mr. Myrick moved to approve
the minutes of the December 14 meeting. Mr. Mulvenon seconded and the motion
carried unanimously.

1/11/06.3

Mr. Mulvenon moved to
approve the Comment on the Class 3 Modification to the Hazardous Waste Facility
Permit for the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant.Mr. Adams seconded and the motion carried
with one abstention (Mr. Wesolowski).

Action Items

Mr. West will find out the protocol for
air monitoring along the haul road. Complete.Information is provided in
Attachment 3.

DOE will provide additional details to
the Board on the Haul Road
cost estimates and actuals. Status.
A detailed report will be given at the EM committee meeting January 18.

Ms. Hughes will research hypothetical
maximum exposure results found at other locations compared to Oak Ridge’s number
of 12 millirems.

Ms. Hughes will provide guidance for the
2005 ASER when it becomes available.

Mr. McCracken will get more information
about what non-ORO wastes will be shipped to the TSCA Incinerator for
disposition.

Mr. McCracken will keep the Board
informed as he can on start date and the estimated cost of completion for
new work outside the accelerated closure plan.

Respectfully submitted,

Sandy Reagan, Secretary

Attachments (3) to these minutes are available on
request from the ORSSAB support office.